Tulip Festing...

(Photo by Solomon)

                                        This is what I get when I ask Sollie to take a picture with me.

Photo by Ben

We took a trip out to the Tulip Festival in Woodburn,Oregon. It was our first time going, but since I am a sucker for road trips and taking pictures I couldn't believe we haven't gone before. I told Ben, "Can you believe we haven't been here before? This seems like the kind of thing I would make us do every year." I have avoided it in the past because of stories from other families that it was one giant mud pit. Well to be honest, we do go the the Dahlia Festival in Canby almost every year..kinda the same thing. The one thing that kind of irritated me from a photographers perspective was that they let people walk in between the rows so it was impossible to get a photo of just the flowers without crowds of people walking through. But I love watching people so it was fun. I don't think I have ever seen so many different cultures of people all in one place, there were people .....and tulips of every color and shape so much diversity so many different languages!
I am glad we waited for a dry weekend, it was crowded, but no mud!
I think we will just have to go back again next year. I might have to make this for Nalah to wear to it.  Like I need an excuse to knit that.

One last summer adventure

Today was Sophie's last day of summer vacation and I simply couldn't stand the idea of spending it in the city. I had originally hoped to make it out to Lost Lake since we hadn't been there since I was pregnant with Solomon, but the weather was really cool..., too cool for a mountain lake. So we drove down to Silver Falls State Park.
It has been almost 10 years since Ben and I came here the first time on our first trip together, and my first trip anywhere, really. I was 19 at the time. I remember I was so tired that I could hardly make it back up the trail after hiking around the South Falls. I was very newly pregnant with Sophie then, and very, very tired. We had made a huge detour just to see a waterfall(we missed the 30+ waterfalls in the Columbia Gorge somehow!!). I was too sick to really enjoy it the first time which was a HUGE bummer because I had been waiting to see a waterfall all my life.
When I was little, I was obsessed with waterfalls. I fantasized about them,had dreams about them, drew pictures of them, and wrote stories about them. I thought they were magical places. But I believed they only existed in the real world in Hawaii. I had no idea that someday I would be living in a state pretty much drowning in waterfalls. The only thing missing from thoes childhood fantasies are the unicorns. I am hoping to have a goat someday,.... and that's close enough.